Originally published: New York : Thomson/Texere, 2004

Includes bibliographical references ( p. [293]-306) and index

Preface -- Acknowledgments for the updated second edition -- Chapter summaries -- Prologue -- pt. I. Solon's warning : skewness, asymmetry, induction -- 1. If you're so rich, why aren't you so smart? -- Nero Tulip -- Hit by lightning -- Temporary sanity -- Modus operandi -- No work ethics -- There are always secrets -- John the high-yield trader -- An overpaid hick -- The red-hot summer -- Serotonin and randomness -- You dentist is rich, very rich -- 2. A bizarre accounting method -- Alternative history -- Russian roulette -- Possible worlds -- An even more vicious roulette -- Smooth peer relations -- Salvation via aeroflot -- Solon visits Regine's nightclub -- George Will is no Solon : on counterintuitive truths -- Humiliated in debates -- A different kind of earthquake -- Proverbs galore -- Risk managers -- Epiphenomena -- 3. A mathematical mediation on history -- Europlayboy mathematics -- The tools -- Monte Carlo mathematics -- Fun in my attic -- Making history -- Zorglubs crowding the attic -- Denigration of history -- The stove is hot -- Skills in predicting past history -- My Solon -- Distilled thinking on your PalmPilot -- Breaking news -- Shiller redux -- Gerontocracy -- Philostratus in Monte Carlo : on the difference between noise and information -- 4. Randomness, nonsense, and the scientific intellectual -- Randomness and the verb -- Reverse turing test -- The father of all pseudothinkers -- Monte Carlo poetry -- 5. Survival of the least fit, can evolution be fooled by randomness? -- Carlos the emerging-markets wizard -- The good years -- Averaging down -- Lines in the sand -- John the high-yield trader -- The quant who knew computers and equations -- The traits they shared -- A review of market fools of randomness constants -- Naive evolutionary theories -- Can evolution be fooled by randomness? -- 6. Skewness and asymmetry -- The median is not the message -- Bull and bear zoology -- An arrogant twenty-nine-year-old son -- Rare events -- Symmetry and science -- Almost everybody is above average -- The rare-event fallacy -- The mother of all deceptions -- Why don't statisticians detect rare events? -- A mischievous child replaces the black balls -- 7. The problem of induction -- From Bacon to Hume -- Cygnus Stratus -- Nordhoff's -- Sir Karl's promoting agent -- Location, location -- Popper's answer -- Open society -- Nobody is perfect -- Induction and memory -- Pascal's wager -- Thank you, Solon --

pt. II. Monkeys on typewriters : survivorship and other biases -- It depends on the number of monkeys -- Vicious real life -- This section -- 8. Too many millionaires next door -- How to stop the sting of failure -- Somewhat happy -- Too much work -- You're a failure -- Double survivorship biases -- More experts -- Visibility winners -- It's a bull market -- A guru's opinion -- 9. It is easier to buy and sell than fry an egg -- Fooled by numbers -- Placebo investors -- Nobody has to be competent -- Regression to the mean -- Ergodicity -- Life is coincidental -- The mysterious letter -- An interrupted tennis game -- Reverse survivors -- The birthday paradox -- It's a small world! -- Data mining, statistics, and charlatanism -- The best book I have ever read! -- The backtester -- A more unsettling extension -- The earnings season : fooled by the results -- Comparative luck -- Cancer cures -- Professor Pearson goes to Monte Carlo (literally) : randomness does not look random! -- The dog that did not bark : on biases in scientific knowledge -- I have no conclusion -- 10. Loser takes all, on the nonlinearities of life -- The sandpile effect -- Enter randomness -- Learning to type -- Mathematics inside and outside the real world -- The science of networks -- Our brain -- Buridan's donkey or the good side of randomness -- When it rains, it pours -- 11. Randomness and our mind : we are probability blind -- Paris or the Bahamas? -- Some architectural considerations -- Beware the philosopher bureaucrat -- Satisficing -- Flawed, not just imperfect -- Kahneman and Tversky -- Where is Napoleon when we need him? -- "I'm as good as my last trade" and other heuristics -- Degree in a fortune cookie -- Two systems of reasoning -- Why we don't marry the first date -- Our natural habitat -- Fast and frugal -- Neurobiologists too -- Kafka in a courtroom -- An absurd world -- Examples of biases in understanding probability -- We are option blind -- Probabilities and the media (more journalists) -- CNBC at lunchtime -- You should be dead by now -- The Bloomberg explanations -- Filtering methods -- We do not understand confidence levels -- An admission --

pt. III. Wax in my ears : living with randomitis -- I am not so intelligent -- Wittgenstein's ruler -- The Odyssean mute command -- 12. Gamblers' ticks and pigeons in a box -- Taxi-cab English and causality -- The Skinner pigeon experiment -- Philostratus redux -- 13. Carneades comes to Rome : on probability and skepticism -- Carneades comes to Rome -- Probability, the child of skepticism -- Monsieur de Norpois' opinions -- Path dependence of beliefs -- Computing instead of thinking -- From funeral to funeral -- 14. Bacchus abandons Antony -- Notes on Jackie O.'s funeral -- Randomness and personal elegance -- Epilogue. Solon told you so -- Beware the London traffic jams -- Postscript. Three afterthoughts in the shower -- First thought : the inverse skills problem -- Second though : on some additional benefits of randomness -- Uncertainty and happiness -- The scrambling of messages -- Third thought : standing on one leg -- Acknowledgments for the first edition -- A trip to the library : notes and reading recommendations -- Notes -- References -- Index

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews